Archive of Our Own

“Left, Right?”

A pair of heads turned at the abrupt command, though only one of the women spoke.  There was no need for coded phrases or lowered voices: the wide dining hall of the Tavern in the Mists was empty, the many tables stacked with their chairs until the next mealtime, though the fires in the sunken stone hearths throughout the place were stoked to fullness.  When the dark of the year came to these mountains, it brought with it cold to rival the tundras of Northrend, and cast impenetrable mists over the green bamboo forests below the sheer cliffs.  If Right were the type of woman given to flights of fancy, she might imagine that the rest of the world had ceased to exist, vanished beneath gray and smoky seas, and this place the only lonely outpost of civilization that remained.

But she had always been diligently practical, and all that had been on her mind before the silence had been broken were the delays the weather would cause in their operations.  Reports from Kalimdor were three weeks behind. “Yes, My Prince?”

“Join me in my drawing room.  There is something urgent that we must discuss.”

“Yes, sir.”

Right held the glance that she meant to share with Left until their client, master, and ward, Wrathion of the Black Dragonflight and Heir to Neltharion, had turned his back with a swish of his cloak and began to march up the ancient set of wooden stairs that led to their guest rooms.  Each step held against his confident stomps with the stolid solemnity of construction built for the harsh winter winds that came sweeping down from Kun-Lai through the narrow mountain passes.  Despite a somewhat shabby outer appearance, she suspected that the Tavern had not always been a highway house for tourists and traders and sellswords smashing into the rooftop with their flighted mounts.  The timbers and the joints were doubled, and they were fixed with ghost iron that still gleamed so brightly it could have come out of the forge just yesterday.  To their Prince’s credit, he did send down a scattering of dust and put a rattle in the bannister carved with leaping tigers older than he was.

That must have pleased him.  He was doing it on purpose.

For whatever reason, Wrathion was making an effort to appear imposing and assured to an audience of two; the cloak, which he didn’t need to stay warm even in the depths of this blizzard, had to have been part of the scheme, as had the ruby droplets at his ears.  The Inn was empty today: a caravan of supplies and the new rotation of healers had arrived just yesterday from Lion’s Landing, and had found themselves very thoroughly snowed in.  Crutch or no crutch, the Prince of Stormwind had dragged himself and his entourage out to their encampment from what she could only assume was a misplaced sense of duty: it was they that should have come to him at his call, but any concerns she might have had for the rules and affairs of the Alliance had been left on the shores of Westfall some ten years or more ago.

In the look she gave her partner was the only piece of pertinent information: Wrathion had not mentioned this apparently pressing issue until Anduin Wrynn wasn’t nearby.

Wrathion’s boots had vanished from view; Left jerked her head toward her shoulder, popping a joint in her neck. “They’ve swapped spit finally and he wants to talk about it.”

Out of habit, Right checked for each dagger on her hip, then tapped the heel of her boot to reassure herself that the third was still tucked properly inside. “No, I don’t think so.  He’s not got that skip in his step.”

A rare laugh huffed out from between Left’s tusks. “Right, right, like when they held hands.”

Everyone on this mountain knew that Wrathion and Anduin were completely enamored with one another.  In fairness to the boys, there were more spies crammed into the Tavern and crawling all over this mountain than could possibly be employed by just the Alliance and the Blacktalon.  What remained of the smoldering animosity between their camp and the 7th Legion was cosigned to card games and the old Westfall standby of cornhole because in the day-to-day they were both more occupied with tossing the corpses of every conceivable faction over the cliffside.  The majority were from the loyalist Horde forces, it was true: Garrosh wasn’t going to forgive the Bell, nor get over his failure to murder one human boy.  But there were also the bands of mogu up from the Valley, yuangol down from the steppes, saurok slithering out of the nearby caves, mantid long-scouts, Scarlet zealots who had traveled quite far just to be gutted by a cutlass, and the tainted cultists that had haunted Wrathion’s shadow since his hatching.  The last were the most persistent; an eye that cared nothing for borders hissed instructions to them, telling them where and how far to go, and some of that dread curse would leak out of their eyes and ears once they were dead.

She and Left always burned the bodies.  A habit from the early days, when she had still worn a sling over her back so that she could carry her Prince when he’d grown too tired to hold his visage.

“Now, I expect what we discuss here to never leave this room.”

Wrathion was at the window, peering through its slightly parted shutters, and addressed them only once the lock on the door had clicked closed.  Right could feel the wards that her Prince had placed warm the wood and old iron for a heartbeat, before they quickly faded back to intended obscurity.  They were a draconic magic of his own devising: neither she nor Left were spell-slingers that could have possibly introduced him to the basics of arcanum, and by the time the first mage had been recruited into their organization, he had grown enough into his powers to have moved beyond needing a mortal tutor.

That was his way: moving forward unceasingly.

If she blinked, he would have already reached the sky. “Yes, my Prince.”

“Very good.”

With a flick of his fingers, Wrathion closed the blinds and rounded on the both of them.  Beneath his cloak, he had exchanged his pale silks and white leathers for a seasonable match to the dark fur that lined his collar: thick black pleats in the likeness of dragonscale, the heavy stitching in gold thread, with rubies running off his shoulders and down his wide sleeves in a pattern akin to sparks shed from a blacksmith’s hammer.  Polished crocodile leather buckled his gold-inlaid armor to his hips and had been allowed to keep their scales on the long boots with their slight heel – which, he was no longer unsteady in them.  She knew he had been practicing.  He had made the entire ensemble himself, like he did all of his clothing: in the last few weeks, one or both of them had spotted him bent over his worktable, cloth bunched up near his elbows and his gloves under his arm.

He had to have been preparing for today for quite a while. “It has come to my attention that one of my agents has been derelict in their duty.”

Years prior, when they had been new mercenaries for hire that respected no borders and held no loyalties, Left had taught her the meditative techniques she used to not so much as flinch even under the worst of tortures or on the bloodiest of battlefields.  The skill served her well here, because her straight face did not slip so much as a fraction of an inch.

“I see.  What is their name?  We will – ”

“No.” Wrathion interrupted her.  He hadn’t done that since his whelp form had first teethed, and she caught his shoulders tightening under his layers of clothing.  He cleared his throat. “...no, that won’t be necessary at this time.  The soldier in question confessed his crimes to me directly, pleading absolution.”

“So it was a man?” Left’s impressively neutral aside caught them both unawares, but only Wrathion let his brows raise.

“...yes.  Yes.  That is correct.  He is one of our covert agents operating abroad.” Neither of them asked if the man had confessed by private post, or chartered a mage portal direct to Pandaria. “I was feeling quite magnanimous when he came to me, and allowed him to explain his failures more thoroughly.”

Wrathion was settled more into his stride now: he began to take a turn around the room, grandeur in his step even if his stage setting was limited to two ancient, if well-made, benches and a table that must have predated the last Emperor.  He kept his shoulders back, his spine straight and assured, and his chin was high – and, she noticed, he had trimmed and combed the small showing of facial hair he wore there.  Now that they occupied a closed room, she caught the touch of scent that Right had no doubt noticed when they were downstairs: fig, cedar, and dominant notes of citron.  It brought to mind an event from earlier that year: as summer settled warm and windy on the cliffs, long pack trains of grummle traders had carried oranges up from Krasarang along the Dragon’s Spine, and had stopped for a spell to recuperate on the Stair.  A great big basket of the fruits had dominated the central table at mealtimes in the week afterward, and the Prince of Stormwind had done all that he could to hide his seconds and thirds.

A vain effort: someone had obviously taken note of it. “Now, I have no time to spare for the personal affairs of my soldiers.  You both know this.”

She nodded, while Left impersonated a stonecarved Mogu general. “Imagine my surprise, then, when he deigned to inform me that he had become infatuated with his target and wished to advance their relationship.”

“...”

“...”

Right had never imagined that she would raise a child.

She was a hard woman, coarse as the salt-blasted stones her family had cut with their bodies for the last four generations, and though she had broken the knuckles on her hands through other means, they had healed just as rough as those that she could remember tying back her hair or putting her to bed.  She’d not wanted that life: there was nothing to show for the work, the sweat, or the years, and if she was to bleed for anyone or anything, then she would bleed for herself, and count the exchange fair.  On hot nights, her forehead against Left’s broad, scarred back, she could still feel the blazing sun beating down on her from its merciless perch over Stranglethorn, as though it were driving her along the uneven trails toward the crashing southern sea.  The light sliced through the humid, restless shadows beneath the canopy so thick it created its own atmosphere from the mist and the warbling shrieks of paradise birds, and if not for a single stray sunbeam, she’d not have seen the orcish woman waiting at the bend for careless travelers to miss their step.

Right had never thought she’d had room in her for love, so maybe it was fairer to say that life had a way of fulfilling wishes she’d never bothered to make.  It was well that she could think on her feet, and had the skill to slip under an orc’s much stronger arm, and had by now gleaned a fair enough understanding of having both a child and a dragon in her charge and needing answers.

She even thought her bargain more fair than most parents’.  After all, Wrathion did pay them. “Is our mission to assassinate the object his obsession?”

Right wasn’t disappointed: Wrathion’s shoulders immediately jumped, scrunching up toward his ears while alarm leaped into his expression. “N, No!  Not at all!”

“Then, is it kidnapping?” Left was lockstep with her, as always.

“It is neither!” For a dragon whose visage bore dark skin, it was easier to detect his blush through changes in the ambient temperature.  They’d not lit the squat stove in the center of the room when they had entered, and yet the space had become quite comfortable. “And I would think you both know not to interrupt me!”

“Of course.  I apologize, my Prince.”

Wrathion squinted, searching for insincerity, but there was none to be found: Right knew neither of them wanted him to end this meeting out of frustration before he had said all that he wanted to say.  It took some few seconds, but he huffed, satisfied, and smoothed the front of his jerkin with both hands, though it showed nary a wrinkle.  Gone were the days of accidentally dipping his sleeves into bowls or ignoring how his flames had put holes in his scarves, and it had been a year now since he had needed to ask either of them to tuck his cravat or wrap his turban for him.  The tidying was habitual, but even then, he had taught himself to hide the habit around anyone else that was not named Left or Right.

“Very good.” Too, he tucked some of his hair behind his ear, his knuckles brushing the fur edge of a closer, tighter turban worn in consideration of the wind. “Now, as I said, neither.  The confession was a show of loyalty to me, and a trust in my judgement.  So, I graciously offered to aid him in his pursuit of passion, so he might achieve his goals and clear his head for his work.  To that end – ”

They had come, at last, to the crux of the matter, and in the red spill of light from his eyes there was a glittering anticipation. “I would like the two of you to lay out your experiences and direction, so I might grant them to him in turn.  I have obviously been occupied with affairs far greater than simple dalliances, while you two, as my most trusted mortal lieutenants, have more worldly knowledge.”

That she grunted before she spoke was a sign that Left had thought about continuing the tease, then decided not to, not when the need was more or less in the open air, and Wrathion was looking so intently at the both of them.  He still needed to tilt his head back to do so, but it wouldn’t be very long at all until that, too, would be left behind.  Right’s father had said once, the days are long but the years are short, and for most of her life she’d thought he meant how quickly the years were stolen out of him, his reward for his lifetime of work and patriotism.  It wasn’t until the visions of the small whelp and the little child had slipped through her fingers like water that she could admit that she had been wrong about what he’d thought and believed, at least when it came to this.

A day was a year.  An hour was a summer.  By the next winter, he would be a man, someone new, and perhaps she’d have come up with some maudlin saying to describe what that felt like.

Her partner’s rough reply brought her back into the moment. “We’re two women.”

Left’s stance had changed: her hand went to her hip and her shoulders relaxed, her posture no longer so stolidly impenetrable. “If he wants to know how to tumble with a man, you’ll need to tell us.”

Wrathion cleared his throat, stroking his chin for a moment to disguise how he shifted from one foot to the other. “I…would prefer an overview of both.”

“He would prefer it, you mean?” 

Right didn’t think her tone when she spoke was kind; she’d never learned how to be kind.  But the thread that Wrathion sought, whatever thread it might have been, surely must have existed somewhere in her words, because he spent long seconds in consideration, staring at the empty stove just for want of something to look at, before he replied.

“...no, I would prefer it.  If – you both would be so kind.”

“Then let’s sit.” Left slapped the back of one of the benches before dropping into it, the antique creaking in alarm but heroically holding on. “C’mon.”

Right waited until Wrathion had gone first, his steps quicker than he likely meant them to be, and then followed, her small smile safely behind his back.

The days were still long.  That was enough.

Prince Anduin Llane Wrynn was not at the temporary encampment of Alliance soldiers and healers.

Anduin Llane Wrynn had never left the Tavern in the Mists at all.

Anduin Llane Wrynn was facing an inquisition, and if he had known that this was how events were going to unfold today, he would have chosen a cliff instead of Tong’s kitchen as his destination.

“I…truly cannot say how sorry I am to have trespassed.” 

“So, you know that you aren’t allowed into my kitchen.”

Anduin could cringe no deeper into the very comfortable chair that Tong had brought for him and placed in the center of the cosy, wonderfully warm kitchen in question.  That the old pandaren had made a second trip to bring a stool and a pillow so that he might prop up his bad leg only made Anduin feel that much more guilty.  The entire scene had been arranged by fate to grind his conscience into nothing: the grand stove that he had struggled to inexpertly stoke to fullness now roared under Tong’s careful hand and thoroughly dashed the chill that had plagued him since the morning.  Old pots so worn that the dancing cranes pressed into their sides had faded nonetheless bubbled and simmered happily, the rising threads of steam carrying the aroma of today’s supper, chicken and ginseng and ginger, with little notes of sweetness that Anduin couldn’t place but nonetheless made his mouth water.  His foolhardy plan had required that he skip the breakfast that his guards had shared with the encampment, and now, in addition to wishing he could sink into the floor and disappear, he was hungrier than ever.

“Yes,” he admitted, his chin digging into his clavicle, which was an extremely childish response that he was working quite hard to stop doing but this situation was so tremendously agonizing that it was the worse option to look Tong in the eye and admit to the whole of his wrongdoing.  He had taken this disastrous course precisely because he had, stupidly, thought it the best means to hide his other, much earlier mistake, which had only led to him making a second, even worse mistake.  This was the sort of snowballing failure that clergymen wrote cautionary hymns to warn their flock of the price of misdeeds.

Maybe Anduin could write one himself, once he found a monastery far enough away from this inn and this moment to suit his impending self-exile.

“Here.  Eat.”

A little red plate crowded with lightly steaming turnovers was abruptly held within Anduin’s narrowed point of view, which made him even more outrageously miserable. “I…couldn’t possibly – ”

“You sneak into where you are not meant to go, and now you refuse my generosity?”

Anduin felt his wince in his whole body. “...of…course not.”

At the first bite, the crust flaked warmly against his cheeks and chin, heavenly in its softness, and the filling burst onto his tongue: rich, thick curry and braised beef, because at some point Tong had discovered that while Anduin would never refuse his lovely meals, he preferred the rarer beef over the omnipresent pork in pandaren cuisine.  In contrast to the human kingdoms, cattle were work animals on this continent, rather than the primary source of protein and dairy; the milk that Tong used came from the goats that freely wandered the grounds, or whichever of the grummle yaks had a little calf trailing along behind her.  When he had passed through the Valley, back when he could still make his way on his own and hadn’t needed to rest two hours for every hour traveled, he had seen oxen in gilt harnesses tilling the wide, dark fields or hauling wagons weighted with stacked barrels of brew and great burlap sacks of rice three times as heavy as a man in full armor.  Which wasn’t to say that beef was never incorporated into meals, just that Tong had to go just a little bit out of his way on the regular to provide ungrateful trespassers with their favorite flavors.

Anduin was one and a half turnovers in before he just crumpled completely.

“Master Tong, I am so sorry, I was trying to use your stove to burn something.”

Tong, who by then had sat himself atop a stool and made himself a pot of tea, put his cup aside and laced his fingers together after leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees. “I am but a simple innkeeper, Prince Anduin.  Tong will do.”

“But – ”

“Still, thank you for your honesty.  I am angry, yes, but I am more glad that you were not hurt.  Such a thing can happen if you do not know how great these flames can grow.”

It was very much impossible to hide the singed ends of his sleeves, so Anduin did not even try. “I understand.  I’ll never try such a thing again, I swear to you.”

The deep, rolling chuckle that seemed to come out of the center of Tong’s chest finally allowed Anduin to raise his eyes.  There was a smile within a grizzled muzzle waiting for him and the red cord that tied off the center of his thin beard swung silently with his every word. “I needed only your apology, Prince Anduin, not your oath.  You are a smart boy that learns from his mistakes and so, I trust your word.”

The pang of guilt that punched Anduin in the gut was strong, but the swell of pleasure on its heels was much stronger, and the billowing heat of it pushed the tension out of his chest and away from his tightened back and shoulders.  Tentatively, he relaxed in his seat, and turned his empty plate in his hands, every ache gone from his fingers and the mangled knee that every healer had reluctantly warned him might never be as it once was, though they had said the same for every other bone in his body and those, with time and care and the grace of the Prophet and the Light, had mended.  Tong picked up his tea again, sipping with an unhurried hum of contentment, and from this signal Anduin guessed that if he wanted this to be the end of it, then Tong would go along with his choice and say nothing more.  Shamefully, Anduin eagerly considered it, though his exit would by necessity be terribly awkward, and he would still have to make a trip to the cliffs to do what he couldn’t do at the stove before Tong’s footsteps in the hall had alerted him to the fact that he was about to be discovered.

He shifted in his seat again.  He felt paper scrunch under his arse.

He honestly didn’t know why he even spent time wondering if he would keep hiding it.  He already knew he wasn’t going to give up on that.  What he was actually going to do was confess, right here and right now.  If Tong trusted him, what sort of person was he to not trust him in turn?  And that out of…of embarrassment?  Did he really have it in him to lie out of discomfort?

…

He almost did.  Nearly.

It took some small amount of time before Anduin broke the silence. “I…earlier today, I made a trip to Madam Goya’s establishment.”

Tong took a sip of tea, his eyes closed so that he might savor the subtle flavors.  Anduin was pathetically grateful for that, because he could feel every inch of exposed skin, ghoulishly pale after weeks and weeks indoors, showing great, mottled patches of pinks and reds.  Inside the many bulky layers he had no choice but to wear or else catch his death when limping to the latrine, heat was gathering in all the most uncomfortable of places, causing wool and cotton to stick to his pits and the backs of his thighs.  If he grew any hotter, he would most certainly combust, and lacking as he did even an apprentice’s rudimentary skills as a mage, the conflagration would consume him in an instant.

He wished it would.  By the Light, how he wished it. “I purchased illicit material from her.”

Tong opened his eyes to look at him, his peppered brows rising slowly.  He lowered his cup and held it in his lap. “...Prince Anduin, most of her wares are legitimate under the laws of Pandaria.  If they are not in your kingdom, then – ”

Anduin shook his head so hard he grew a little dizzy. “Pardon, pardon me, no, I didn’t mean illegal items.”

Tong’s brows rose a little higher.  Anduin lifted up his plate and smashed it against his face, spilling crumbs all over his shirtfront.  At the same time, he whispered, and prayed that Tong wouldn’t hear him.

“It was pornography.”

“...ah.” Tong had heard him.

It was the most childish thing of all that Anduin felt at that very moment a tremble in the back of his throat.  Logically, realistically, sociologically, he was fifteen, and on the cusp of becoming a man, and the Tavern was ten thousand miles from the cool, stone pew on which a boy of seven took his life lessons because by all accounts, the King of Stormwind was wildly diminished since the death of his Queen and did no more than haunt the Keep’s halls when he wasn’t losing himself to bloodshed on the frontier.  Piety as preached by the Church of the Light was an utter purity of spirit found only in a chosen few, a lie upended along with all other callow biases the moment he witnessed a tauren Sunwalker alongside undead that harnessed the Light, though it burned them terribly.  When his education was purely under his own auspices, and not that of a shamed churchyard bereft of a traitorous Archbishop, he had thought his worldview so widened as to never again be subject to the constricted feeling that wound bitterly inside him, whispering admonishments.

Things were different now.  He was different.  As personally disastrous as the eventual outcome might have been, his every action in Pandaria could be reckoned as a success.  When he needed to remind himself of that, he had only to dwell on the same memory: a figure in white, gilt, and onyx black, leaning across their half-finished game and jabbing one finger toward his chest.

Wrathion had removed his gloves for that game.  If Anduin closed his eyes, he could still see how his claws had caught the firelight and turned it dark and marvelous.

“Now Anduin, why give those meddlesome priests even a sliver of your attention?  Why let them plant the seeds of doubt?  You lived.  Garrosh was thwarted.  You trounced the Warchief himself at his own ambitious game!  If you ask me they ought to be enthusiastically attempting to wiggle into your good graces.  Though, of course, if you are in the mood for accepting constructive criticism, I’d suggest that next time you be a little quicker on your feet – ”

Anduin swallowed against the knot that had been growing in his throat.  He let out a weight like a hundred Bells in one long, rib-rattling sigh and let his head drop until it could rest on the back of his chair.

“I was – attempting to do some research.” Which probably sounded ludicrously stupid coming from the mouth of an adolescent, but it was the truth. “No library I’ve ever had access to had anything remotely, uh…practical in it.  Just medical texts, anatomical diagrams.”

Useless, all.  They weren’t what he wanted. “I got it into my head that something…recreational…would be more suitable.”

“Such books are typically not realistic.”

Anduin was already dead inside, so he at least didn’t cringe this time. “I know that now.”

“And…you are ashamed?”

If he didn’t have an important appointment at an hour not very far from this one, Anduin might have started making preparations to dig himself a hole to live in out in the goatyard. “Yes.”

“Because your efforts did not work out as you wished, or because you made them in the first place?”

Anduin’s eyes blinked open, just so that he might stare at the ceiling in confusion.  With some effort and a grip on the chair seat, he got himself sitting upright again because he sincerely did not know why he had been asked that question.  He’d not thought that Tong would have a look of reprimand on his face, the tone of his voice hadn’t matched that, but the concern that furrowed his brow and crossed his wide, furred arms caught Anduin by surprise once he saw it.

“I…I suppose it’s both.”

Tong stroked his claws over his beard, then exhaled roughly through his nose. “If I presume too much, tell me at once, but Prince Anduin: did you feel there was no one that you might ask to learn what you wish to know?”

Anduin’s ability to lie had died on a plate of pastries.  There was a wild kind of freedom in coming out on the other side of that, as though with the worst thing he had ever experienced not related to almost dying now in the past, he could do whatever he wished.  He could even leap up out of this chair and dance around, rather than fall flat on his blazing face.

“...yes.  I – there are only the soldiers and the healers.  And the Stormwind priesthood is…is not very helpful with this sort of thing.”

The next question, the one that Anduin dreaded having to answer, somehow never came.  Tong merely stroked his beard a second time, pursing his lips over his sharp teeth as he considered…whatever it was he was considering.  It was a gift he never would have even hoped to receive, knowing that surely anyone that possessed any sort of critical thinking could consider the evidence thus far and realize that, no.

The Prince of Stormwind had never asked his father, King Varian Wrynn, to teach him about sex.  It was not even that his father had existed as three different men throughout his lifetime, from the man running from his own despair to the half-lives that had existed simultaneously and then at last to the man of today, who was somehow all these others and yet none of them at once.  Three times Anduin had had to learn who his father was and yet as well as he had come to know each of them, there was not a one of them that he would march up to and demand that they impart upon him the secrets of intimate relationships.

He did not think there was anyone, anywhere, that could stomach the soulrending mortification that was asking that of their parents.  Or if there was, he’d certainly never met them. “So, I…well, I suppose I have to beg another favor of you.”

With a grunt, Anduin stuck his hands inside his cloak and lifted up his good leg, digging around in the space between the fabric and his thigh.  In his panic, he’d jammed the whole stack of slim, thread-bound softcovers under his arse, lacking any other good place to hide them.  A few of the pages had torn: he could spy a breast peeking out to leer at him.

“If you and your stove could just – ”

“Prince Anduin.” A heavy paw on his shoulder made Anduin nearly leap out of his chair.  He’d not heard Tong even get up. “Anduin.”

He started a second time.  Only his father and Wrathion had ever said his name without his title. “...yes?”

The corners of Tong’s mouth tugged up just a little, before he drew his paw back and, again, for the third time in as many minutes, to Anduin’s surprise, went off to retrieve a small table to place between the chair and stool.  The teapot, now accompanied by two cups, was carried on a tray to the table before Tong took his seat once more and returned to his apparent purpose of catching the Prince of Stormwind continuously off-guard.

“I am an old man, a simple innkeeper, and I have learned in my many years to allow what I hear in this place to enter into one ear – ” He tugged on his left one. “ – and leave out the other.”

He tugged on the right, the ear with the notch cut out of it. “So whatever I may hear, or may be asked, I shall forget over my morning tea.  There are so very many that travel the Stair and it is undoubtedly a fool’s errand for me to try to remember the affairs of each one.”

Anduin’s jaw sagged slightly.

He was bewildered, though not for a lack of understanding: Tong could not have been more clear.  It was the shock of sudden and impossible and confounding relief that left him stupified, as though he had unwittingly been pressing his shoulder against a closed door for so long that he had lost all sense of it.  The look he had was of the sort that would be found when the barrier inexplicably gave away and he, unprepared, crashed onto the threshold beyond in a useless tumble, too knackered in his senses to truly appreciate what had just transpired.

Not once in his life had anyone offered him the gift of anonymity.

Surely, it could not have come so simply, or so quickly.

Surely, there was some condition, because this could not just happen, he wasn’t that lucky, but Tong was wholly occupied drinking his tea once again, as if their conversation had already ended, or not occurred at all.

Slowly, Anduin looked down at the tattered books in his hands, then gingerly laid them upon the table.

“I…have a few questions.”

Tong simply nodded.  Anduin thumbed to the first page he had marked.

“Here, about this – ”

Wrathion was in an incredibly good mood.

He had his rooms to himself now, and had made a final stop at the tall mirror propped up in the corner to inspect the fruits of his many labors.  There was nothing so pleasing as to see the products of his artistry and expertise, laid out in plush blacks and fitted gems, and few things more delightful than the opportunity to run his fingers down the thick fabric and fine thread, his claws trailing every whorl of gold as it formed fanning flames.  He had made his first forays into leathers for this project, and while they had proven unreasonably difficult, resistant to his accelerated tanning methods and squirmy under his hooks and needles, he had proven the more clever and determined.  When he did his turn, watching as his cloak trailed after him in an inky wave, the mail of his armor and the hidden sheaths for his daggers remained snug, secure, and most importantly, wonderfully comfortable.

Yes, yes, his productions were undoubtedly beautiful and potent in their practical use, impressive in every conceivable way, but there really was no point in making something to wear if it wasn’t also comfortable.

“Excllent.  Really, a most excellent outcome.” Wrathion was certainly not in the habit of talking to himself, but with the amount of satisfaction he was feeling, he supposed it could be allowed. “Now, to arrange for a suitable entrance.”

This afternoon, he and Anduin were to meet in the Windward Pavillion, a delightful little celebratory ground they had come across during one of their walks through the winding passes that curled away from the primary road up the Stair.  At one time it was very likely a lookout for the mogu, and then Shado-pan soldiers, constructed as it was from sweeping stones and bearing crouched and fearsome hounds upon every corner of its tiered roof, but those days had faded into distant memory.  Now, there was no one to pass under the bristling conifers and take the wide stairs to the secluded plateau, except for those adventurous enough to press through where others could not.  The view of the mountains and the distant Temple of the Jade Serpent were surely spectacular when shrouded by snowfall and, as had been his thought when he’d suggested the destination to Anduin, suitably romantic.

Wrathion considered himself an expert on such matters.  He had consumed what had to be every form of literature available on the topic, and had just successfully enriched his knowledge so that he might proceed with confidence.

The back of his neck and his drawing room were both still quite hot, but he was ignoring that.  It was time to depart.

He did not skip down the hall.  He’d been caught skipping before, and would not be caught so undignified a second time.  He also did not take the stairs two or three at a time, nor leap in a burst of smoke and sparks to take the entire landing in his dragon form.  True, the Tavern was quite empty, and there would be no one privy to his excitement, but this sort of anticipation was different from any he had felt before.

There was a coiling inside, winding round and round his middle, tight but not in any way painful.  He thought instead that it felt akin to a clenched muscle, waiting to spring, and he supposed if he jumped down the last three steps, just those and no others, it might ease some of the tension before he made his way outside – 

Wrathion indulged himself.  He kicked off from the stair fourth from the bottom.

“...Wrathion?”

He was not, and had never been, clumsy.

Catching himself simply meant slapping his hand onto the banister, then straightening quickly, and assuming posture as to suggest he had always meant to have his tail out and had not needed it to catch his balance.

“Why, Anduin!  You’re back early.”

The Prince of Stormwind had crumbs all over his shirt.  There were also a few on the corner of his mouth, and his cheeks were rosy from heat, his forehead a little red where his bangs were not wholly covering it.  His sash and tabard were nowhere to be found: a far more sensible coat in very respectable blue-grays was ready to encase him from his shoulders to his knees when closed, and would hide the brace that kept his knee steady.  His sheepskin boots had tufts of wool bunched up around his calves, a charming match to the sheepskin cap he had tucked under his arm and which had left his hair sticking up in a few odd directions.  He looked ready for an expedition of some kind, except aside from his cap all he held were his crutch, his foxfur gloves, and Wrathion’s gaze.

Anduin started to smile.  His eyes began to soften.

A slew of recent revelations flashed through Wrathion’s mind.  The coiling inside him grew tighter, and beat in time with his pulse.

“I think I’m underdressed,” Anduin said with a laugh, and Wrathion forgot all about his little mishap with the stairs. “Should I go change?”

Wrathion grinned, and in a handful of steps the space between them was gone. “Into what?  Dreary vestments?  I will tell you what you should do: petition for a complete ensemble wrought  by my hand.”

“And deliver a hundred and one trinkets to you before I can have it?  I think I’ll decline.”

“Anduin, Anduin, Anduin, you have to know I’d give you a discount.”

Wrathion had never imagined that he would fall in love.

And of course he knew it was love, he wasn’t a fool.  Only an idiot would ignorantly endure the swift fluttering in their chest, the frequent wandering of their thoughts to the same individual, their new habit of deferring to the opinions, choices, and desires of another, simply so that the other might smile or know some pleasure or experience a relief long denied, and then assume that they were not in love.  This was no simple infatuation, either, where it was merely Anduin’s grin or his habit of nearly pressing his charming nose to the page when he was truly engrossed in his reading that caught Wrathion’s attention, even if those aspects engendered their fair share of delight.  Nor had it been his intention to ingratiate himself with the Prince of Stormwind, not at the onset of their relationship at least.  He’d not deny that during the spring, when they had first met, he had weighed the risk of provoking the understandable wrath of Varian Wrynn against the considerable returns of a friendship with the heir to the throne.  If, as he was hoping, the Alliance triumphed in the war, and Anduin counted him as a close companion, then…

He was not ashamed of the thoughts that he’d possessed at the time.  His purpose was a necessary one; his intentions, ultimately for the best.  But Wrathion was not the one that had gone looking for a connection for his own ends.

Anduin had come to him.

Hobbling, sunburned, sweaty, and dragging his entire reluctant entourage behind him, Anduin had come to him, wanting to meet him, hoping to speak, conquering the incredible obstacle of the Stair with his broken body simply so he might encounter the black dragon of which he had heard tell.  Wrathion had been quite flattered, certainly surprised, and – in his chest that day, he had felt the first flutter, and they had not stopped since.

It was love.  It was undeniably love.  And if there was one thing about love that he had not learned in his readings, it was just how easy it could be.

“There will be ice, I imagine.”

The Tavern had already disappeared around the bend, replaced by the bare peach trees in their hibernation within the fenced sections on either side of the road, each stretching branch glittering with a layer of ice so clear as to be glass.  The path through the meticulously tended groves had been dutifully salted by Tong earlier in the day, so that the thick particles crunched beneath their heels and the press of Anduin’s crutch.  No concern had to be spent toward the threat of a fall, at least not until visitors passed beneath the archway that would bloom with wisteria come the spring.  At present, it bore only the frosted pandaren lettering that read, Rest Ahead.  Though there was certainly no one around to see – save perhaps his own spies, running circles around those sent by the King – Wrathion still waited until they came to the end of the grove before he offered out his arm.

“If you would allow me.” He bowed, his other arm tucked in the small of his back and dark curls falling across his brow, and felt another surge of pleasure when Anduin’s cheeks grew a touch darker.

“You’re doing that on purpose.”

“Of course I am.”

“Pfft.” 

Anduin smiled again, though he was trying to hide it and look annoyed instead, but he had been born completely bereft of talent when it came to subterfuge.  He was not annoyed at all.  He had already put his arm on the fence so that he could leave his crutch in its usual spot against the final post beside the archway.  Anduin’s weight shifted off his good leg and onto Wrathion’s shoulder and he was proud, quite proud indeed, that he bore it without trouble.  With a dragon’s strength, of course he would be able to, but the feeling of satisfaction was still so strong.  Love truly was easy, and it was exciting, and it was so intricate and interesting and warm, though the arm tucked into his own was quite cool.  It always would be: a black dragon’s fire never truly went out, no matter how deeply they might bury it into a mortal form, and truthfully, when Anduin was near, Wrathion allowed a little more of it to slip from his control and dance beneath his skin.

When he did so now, Anduin gripped him more tightly, enough so that Wrathion could feel the new muscles that had grown in his arm.  Five months on crutches would certainly do that; while the change was not unexpected, Wrathion still felt a spark in the pit of his stomach to feel how strong Anduin’s grip had become.

Perhaps…if he were to do as Left and Right had suggested, and take the time to consider the direction his personal tastes had – 

“Wrathion, are you blushing?”

Their shared stride did not stumble in the least bit, because Wrathion was much more careful on an icy incline than he would be on a staircase, but he hadn’t the opportunity to catch his tail before it flicked upward in surprise.  It was a gesture difficult to miss: the heavy nodules of keratin growing on his club were still hollow within, and rattled when his tail moved too quickly.

“No, I am not.”

“Yes you are.”

“You could not possibly tell.”

An un-Princely grin was spanning Anduin’s face from cheek to cheek. “You just got hotter.  That only happens when you’re blushing.”

Wrathion did not take his eyes from the path, but he absolutely donned a pert scowl just for Anduin. “You may have missed how the season has changed from autumn to midwinter, Anduin, and so it is very possible you lack an understanding of why I would keep myself warmer for your benefit.”

“Uh-huh.” Anduin was quite lucky that his smile was lovely to look at. “Sure.  Oh, but while you’re teaching me a lesson, can I ask you a question?”

“Are you going to sass me over the answer?”

“You like it when I sass you,” Anduin said with a shrug, and continued before Wrathion could argue with him. “How did you get your tail through your clothes?  I don’t think it was there when you were at the top of the stairs.”

The air around them grew a few degrees warmer.  Wrathion’s reply was quite flat. “Magic.”

“Really?”

He did not even have to look at his expression to know that Anduin said that not to sass him, but to act on his own sincere curiosity.  That was Anduin Wrynn’s defining characteristic: sincerity.  A rather terrible quality for a future ruler to have, which Wrathion did try to remind him of on the regular, but no amount of lost games and debates had shaken Anduin from his throne of honesty.  It was infuriating, but also impressive, and as the victor of many of their contests Wrathion nonetheless felt as though he had still lost something every bout.  Only just recently had he at last admitted to himself that it had been his own doubt that had been patiently, cheerfully eroded across a hundred shared afternoons.  Anduin was sincere and he was persistent and for reasons unfathomable he always seemed so surprised when Wrathion pointed that out to him.

It wasn’t fair that Anduin could trounce him in terribly specific ways and then mistrust the signs of his own accomplishment.

Wrathion, thinking of that, glanced at Anduin, and felt as though he was staring into the sun.  Puppies and infants could not look more pleading, and he heaved a great big sigh. “...yes, it is magic.  The spell I use to form my visage has secondary arcanum specifically designed to accommodate clothing.  Mortals would be quite aggrieved if a dragon were to appear before them stark naked.”

He expected additional questions.  When none were forthcoming, he stopped staring at the landscape with his theatrically put-upon expression and glanced back at Anduin.  The other Prince was groping at his belt for the cap he had tucked into it, yanking it out and then trying with minimal success to pull it on over his head with one hand.

“H…hold on, stop for a moment.”

Wrathion did.  Anduin carefully turned his body and leaned against the nearest wall of rock so that he could take his cap in both hands and drag it down over his ears, which were the brightest cherry pink that Wrathion had ever seen.

“Alright.  Alright, we can keep going.” Anduin took his arm, his grip quite tight. “We’re almost there, aren’t we?”

What could Wrathion do but answer, a sensation like hot static in his head? “Yes, almost.”

They had come to one of the many persistent thickets of pandaren pine that stubbornly clung to the mountainside, their thunderous greens on proud display despite the thickly layered ice and snow.  A fresh coating was on its way, the gray sky casting down wide, bunched flakes that Wrathion could still only spy when they drifted across the defiant towers of evergreens, or landed upon the dark blue of Anduin’s cap.  The white flecks disappeared quickly, swept away by Wrathion’s every steaming exhale; earlier he had not lied to hide any embarrassment on his part, he purposefully let fire smolder in the very depths of his throat and billow off his tail, banishing the cold where they walked so that Anduin’s joints might be spared harassment by the weather.  Briefly, their footsteps would show in the moist, warmed earth, before the snow and the frosty wind covered their shadows and hid those places where they had been.  This, too, was a conscious act: they would have true privacy when they reached their destination, as secret a rendezvous as he could arrange.

“Here we are.”

Just ahead, the crowding conifers yielded to wide columns of pale stone that here and there still bore a patch of brilliantly crimson paint and golden lettering.  A thousand battles had left their mark upon the stairs and their banisters, the stones chipped, cracked, and notched by the tip of spears in antiquity, and Wrathion supposed that if he made an effort to root down in the snow and the very many pine needles that had piled up at the entry, he would find arrowheads and the stray trinket or two.  A jade serpent bracelet for protection, perhaps, or a golden coin bearing the snarling face of a mogu warlord to promise strength and victory in battle, though if there were any within the interior, the Shado-pan had found them decades prior.  Save for the snowdrifts gathering between posts and slipping off the slopes of the tiered rooftop, the pavilion itself was empty of all signs of habitation except that which had been built into it, and not yet been eroded by the centuries:

A great, central brazier resembling a crouching tiger, which served as the signal light.

A half dozen smaller braziers, these squat, square, and entirely utilitarian.

And four stone benches, each facing a cardinal direction.

Anduin, short of breath, put his hand upon the tiger and sat with a grunt on the bench which faced west, toward the misty green of the Jade Forest far below.  From this vantage point, the lower elevations hardly seemed real: there would be winks of color, red or green or eerie gold, each quick to vanish as the frosty gray rolled lazily through the landscape, pushed by the short winds.  The newly finished serpent statue dominated the central landscape: She, as rendered by her devotees, rose as a graceful leviathan above the obscuring haze, which lapped at her claws like waves at a shoreline.  By nightfall, the mist would be still, and the forest would utterly cease to be, gone to a white and boundless silence that, yes, he thought had to be frightening to the faint of heart, but it was also a sight fantastic in its scope, strange and new and impossible to find anywhere that was not here, or any time that was not now.

Wrathion felt…he supposed, it was a feeling like privilege, looking out from where he stood beside Anduin.  A specialness, a pricelessness, for which he immediately had the desire to take it, and enclose it, and keep it in a vault where it might be his forever.

“I wish I could paint.”

Wrathion turned his head, just so that he could tilt it at Anduin. “You want to be an artist…?”

Anduin shook his head. “No, I mean…I wish I could paint this.  So I could take it with me.”

The corners of Wrathion’s mouth twitched. “At the very least, you can enjoy it while I get these lit.”

There was fresh tinder and logs in every brazier, along with a little coal as an accelerant, because Wrathion planned his outings with Anduin very meticulously; all the necessary supplies had been delivered yesterday.

A polished copper door upon the tiger’s belly yielded to his tugging finger – silently, he noticed.  Left and Right must have oiled the hinges when they were here.  He knelt, and brought both of his hands up to his mouth after pulling off his gloves, setting both well aside so that they would not catch any stray embers.  Into his cupped palms and lightly curled fingers, he exhaled a graceful spiral of crimson flame, its wavering tip casting a trail of black smoke dotted with scarlet.  A variety of scrolls on smithing had come into his possession recently, which he had put into immediate use in diversifying his skillset, and had by happenstance stumbled upon a compendium of ores and minerals, as cataloged by five generations of Pandaren artisans.  Their work had branched into the alchemical, and they had curated a detailed list of the properties of certain compounds he knew of but had no name for.  From birth he’d had an innate connection to the earth, and to its role within himself, but only then had he known that the soft click in the back of his throat was a derivative of strontium produced naturally by his body, which burned that stunning, tireless red when ignited by his draconic power.

In the grand scheme of things, he did not truly need the name nor the exact process, but it pleased him quite deeply to better understand himself.  Moreover, the greater the knowledge he harbored, the more rapt Anduin became during their conversations, as attentive to the exhaustive details as Wrathion was.  Even Left and Right had their limit on how long they would indulge him, but Anduin…

He enjoyed it.  He’d listen until dawn broke beyond the windowsill, regardless of the scolding he would receive from his minders.

Wrathion carefully breathed upon his conjured fire twice more, gently, encouraging its growth until its flickering began to show in the tiger’s eyes.  Then he at last drew it away from himself and let it float off his fingers and onto the tinder hungry for warmth.  The crackling that came as his reward was accompanied by a robust, piney scent free of smoke, as the tiger’s clever construction guided all smoke upward, toward the highest point in the ceiling and the vents hidden between the stone struts.

Pleased, Wrathion shut the door and rose to his feet. “The craftsmanship of this place is truly – ”

Anduin was also on his feet.  He must have been expending great effort to do so, because both heels were firmly planted and his back was straight and if there was any trembling or weakness, it was hidden away in some place that Wrathion could not find.

Anduin’s hands closed around Wrathion’s upper arms.

Anduin pulled him, and stayed upright when he did.

Then Anduin kissed him.

He kissed him, and their teeth clacked together because Wrathion’s gob had been wide open in disbelief.  The both of them flinched at the same time, perhaps Anduin more than he because only one of them had a draconic skeleton, but the needling ache deterred Anduin not one whit.  He pulled back, squeezed Wrathion’s biceps tighter, and tried again – slower.

Slower, with more care, so that their lips met instead, and Wrathion felt Anduin’s shaking breath against not his lips or his chin, but sliding cooly over his tongue.

His tail, he failed to notice, was sticking straight out behind him.

The first time Anduin had kissed Wrathion, it had been a peck on the cheek.

He had rushed to his room after, pressed his burning face into his pillow, and wondered how he was ever going to get any further than that if he could barely look at Wrathion without going to pieces.

Wrathion was the most beautiful person that Anduin had ever seen.  Man, woman, ethereal of indeterminate gender: not a one of them seemed comparable to Wrathion now that he had spent so much time with him.  And it was not as though any of them had been ugly!  No, no, some of the women he had seen, they’d been…they’d been lovely, really, they had, and he’d felt himself warm when he was around them.  The lingering pull he felt, and the snatches of dreams that he could remember, those had all been quite ordinary and expected according to the texts he read that didn’t immediately inform him that lusting after a woman was a path toward impurity.  He had assumed that what he’d felt was more or less the whole experience that he could expect, and had not given it much more thought unless his father’s councilors were trying to whisper about marriage arrangements.

Wrathion had changed everything.  Lounging behind that table, gold at his ear and red at his throat, wrapped in finery that better befitted a prince than Anduin’s dusty jerkin, his bottom lip a little more full than the top, and polish in the beard that surely a boy his age couldn’t possibly grow, and his eyes…!

Anduin had seen a dragon’s eyes before.  Slit, sulfur yellow, steaming and full of hate; he’d had no other experience and had thought that there was no other experience to have.

He dreamed of Wrathion’s eyes.  And…and other things, which had set a restlessness inside him that no amount of reading, prayers, and exhausting physical therapy could truly banish.  He felt as though he needed to hurry; there was a sense like he didn’t have time for anything.  It wasn’t impatience, he knew exactly what that was like, and this throbbed too deeply in his chest for it to be something so simple.

Anduin was sure, fairly sure, that it was a sort of fear.

“Ahh, ah, I’m – sorry.  I’m sorry.” 

He gulped, and completely ignored the shooting pain that began in his leg, jolted through his hips, clawed up his spine, and came to sit right at the base of his skull.  The nerve damage, again, the kind that made his healers whisper amongst themselves, but he cared so little about it right now that he didn’t even notice that it made his shoulders tremble.

“That…that wasn’t very good, was it?”

Wrathion was staring at him.  He wasn’t saying anything, and if he continued not to say anything, Anduin was going to fall down. “Can I…try again?  I’ll get the knack of it, I promise.”

The hurrying feeling was making his heart race.  He was scared to death, but also sweating badly, roasting in his coat and under his cap.  He should have taken both off to begin with, especially now that the light had been lit, but he, again, felt like he didn’t have the time for that.  If he didn’t do what he wanted to do, what he’d been thinking about for days on end, then – 

Then, somehow, in some dreadful way, Anduin’s chance to do it would evaporate.  This feeling, lighter than air and yet weighty as a mountain, would disappear and Wrathion along with it.

Anduin kissed him again.

Or, he tried.  What happened was that he smashed his nose against Wrathion’s hand, which the other Prince had managed to get between them.

“No.  No, you cannot.”

Wrathion might as well have kicked him in the stomach.  Anduin’s expression dropped so quickly it could’ve smacked his toes. “I, I’m…I apologize, I should’ve asked, that was so stupid, I’m just really stupid and if you want I’ll just – ”

“I was going to lead!”

That was not what Anduin had thought Wrathion would shout.  He kept shouting, saying things that Anduin also had not expected, while shoving against his face until Anduin remembered he was holding onto him much, much too tightly and finally let go.

“You…you cad!  You lech!” If he hadn’t been panicking, Anduin might’ve been in awe of Wrathion looking more flustered than he’d ever seen him. “How dare you!”

Utterly blindsided, Anduin had no defense against Wrathion or Wrathion’s hot, clawed fingers, which had grabbed both his wrists and pulled them outward.  His face was still so, so close, and by the glow that spilled from his eyes Anduin could see that his lip and the corner of his mouth were wet, that his beard had been mussed, and only then did he realize that that had been the burn he’d felt against his jaw, that and the faint, dark stubble.  Heat rushed off of Wrathion’s skin, billowing against Anduin’s own and adding to the gleam of sweat that covered his face, and when Wrathion growled at him, he saw the bright, white sharpness of his teeth and the red of his tongue.

All these things formed a hot stone in his chest, and that stone sank right into his groin.

Then, Wrathion kissed him.

No, he crashed against Anduin’s nose hard enough to leave them both stunned and blinkered for a half-second, and then kissed him, and Anduin’s eyes screwed shut because Wrathion was so hot, so very hot, his teeth a shocking hardness covered with slick and it…it was so messy.  Kissing like this was so messy.  He knew, he’d been informed, and yet he hadn’t really known until his tongue, numb and dumb and wandering, pushed against Wrathion’s.

It was thinner than his.  It came to the faintest point.  It was wet.

The muscles in Anduin’s thighs clenched so tightly that he swore he felt something pop.  It hurt, but it didn’t matter, and all the surprise and confusion and panic in his expression melted into breathless eagerness.  He made a token attempt to jerk his wrists loose, but Wrathion had gotten his claws into his sleeves, and with no other ideas forthcoming he did the only thing he could, which was push his own tongue deeper, against the wet and the plush texture and, with a plunge, smooth teeth and a pliant cheek.  Wrathion made a noise, muffled, almost a sputter but also a gasp, and Anduin could just see under the light, past the drifting crimson energies to where a beautifully dark, slitted pupil was growing wider and wider.

The dragon’s eye, gleaming, more beautiful than anything, trembling, looking at him.

Anduin yanked at his arms again, much harder this time, but rather than get loose, he heard another pop, and his knee gave way entirely.

He dropped.  Wrathion dropped with him, shouting in alarm, and pain exploded in Anduin’s tailbone as he landed in an agonizing sit upon the bench that he had just left.  Wrathion crashed into his chest directly thereafter and if not for the fact that he had recently been making an effort to be quicker on his feet, all the Prophet’s efforts would have been for nothing when Anduin died of a cracked head.

But Anduin choked out a prayer.  The Light answered.  When the back of his skull hit the stone, he saw a few stars, and nothing more.

“Anduin!”

A familiar voice, high and raw with fear, shouted out from near his chest.  Anduin felt scrabbling hands, and knees bunched on either side of his hips, and then Wrathion was near again, grasping his face, his expression so stricken that it hurt him to look at it. “Anduin, are you alright?  Answer me, speak, can you hear me?  Anduin!”

There were so very many people in Anduin’s life that were constantly worrying about him.  It had been troublesome before, as though his attendants, the councilors, every SI:7 agent, every soldier, and the King himself thought at any moment that Anduin might be snatched up again.  His day was scheduled so that at least three separate parties knew where he was at any given moment; he had a mage’s seal printed on the insides of his undershirts, just so that he couldn’t be pushed through an unauthorized portal.  Overcoming that crushing shadow of concern that always sat on his father’s brow had been an effort of years: time spent making his case, presenting it, arguing it, as much to prove the scope of his own ability as to maybe, finally, convince everyone around him that he wasn’t always a victim in need of rescue.

That he had broken every bone in his body trying to prove that he wouldn’t was very ironic.  He knew that.  He was constantly choking on that irony.

But, it was different when it was Wrathion making that face: tight, afraid, desperately searching and at last appearing his age, or the age that Anduin had always thought he was, which was the same as him.  Wrathion never made that kind of look for anyone else, the same as he didn’t laugh the way he did with Anduin, or pout, or blush, or stick his tail straight out behind him, and before they had met, he’d never imagined that he’d be so callous and selfish and coldhearted as to allow the thought that as long as he stayed the only one to whom Wrathion’s secret emotions would belong, he could forget about all the rest of it.

The things he needed to prove, the mantles he had to live up to, all of it.  They didn’t matter more than Wrathion.

Anduin loved him so much.

“If you don’t speak I am going to carry you back and…and kill you myself, once I am assured you are not dead!”

Anduin smiled.

Panting, disheveled, frazzled, and now with the unmistakable stub of his horns sticking out, too, Wrathion stared at him for several heartbeats.  This gave Anuin the chance to press his palms against the bench and lift his head and shoulders up just high enough to kiss Wrathion on the cheek.

“You’re cute when you’re worried.”

Wrathion immediately tried to strangle him.

But it was worth it.